A few weeks ago, I mentioned to a fellow food loving friend how I was tediously slicing cherry tomatoes for drying in my dehydrator. I grow these tiny little cherry tomatoes that go crazy every summer, and always end up with a bumper crop that challenges my ability to keep up. Drying them was a fussy process of removing the stems, rinsing, slicing in half, and one by one placing cut side up on dehydrator trays. She mentioned that she’d recently processed her extra tomatoes by roasting them whole, pulsing them briefly in the food processor, and using this delicious concoction on pizza. I was immediately inspired. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been testing and roasting and seasoning and adjusting to come up with my own version of this delicious, sweetly tangy, flavor-rich sauce. The long roasting of the tomatoes adds a smoky, layered complexity and delicious velvety texture to this sauce, making it something special. When I opened my CSA box this week and discovered several lushly red tomatoes, I immediately knew I wanted to share this roasted tomato goodness here.

You’ll need:

About 3 lbs of fresh tomatoes

1 medium onion

¼ cup olive oil

Sea salt

Freshly cracked pepper

Herbs, fresh or dried, of your choosing

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Cut large tomatoes in half, leave small tomatoes whole. Slice onion thinly. Spread tomatoes and onion in a pan, and drizzle with olive oil. Sprinkle on salt, pepper, and herbs to taste. Give everything a good stir, then place pan in oven. Every 20 minutes, check the tomatoes and stir everything around. The tops of the tomatoes should start to turn golden, crispy, and bubbly. Stir these cooked bits back in, and keep cooking (checking and stirring every twenty minutes) until the tomato juices become thickened and almost syrupy. This could take anywhere from an hour to two hours or more, depending on your oven and the tomatoes used. When the tomatoes have fully roasted and are nicely thickened, remove from oven and let cool slightly. Pour the mixture into a food processor (this is optional - if you’re happy with the consistency, you can skip this part) and pulse a few times until you reach a consistency you like. If you want to thin the sauce, add a few glugs of olive oil. Taste for seasonings and adjust as needed. Slather on pizza, use as a marinara dipping sauce, serve over pasta, or freeze to use on a blustery January day!